A scandal over ministerial holidays in north Africa highlights once again French complicity with the region’s autocracies

WHEN President Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffled his cabinet in November, he hoped the squeaky-clean team he installed would put an end to a string of mini-scandals that had sapped the government's credibility. He kept his prime minister, François Fillon, whose reputation for probity and discretion fit the new era of austerity. He picked Michèle Alliot-Marie, another Gaullist veteran with a solid ministerial background, as foreign minister. Now both politicians (seen above with Mr Sarkozy) have been caught accepting hospitality from authoritarian north African countries on the cusp of revolution.

Hours before Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical weekly newspaper, broke the story on February 9th, the prime minister's office admitted that, when Mr Fillon and his family holidayed for a week in Egypt over the new year, his hotel bill, a boat trip down the Nile and a flight to go sightseeing were all paid for by the Egyptian government. Mr Fillon was charged for his family's international flight aboard a French government aircraft, his office said; but the French state picked up the hotel bill for his security detail and plane crew.

This revelation emerged at a time when French voters were still digesting another bout of north African largesse. Ms Alliot-Marie, who was holidaying in Tunisia with her family just as the uprising broke out, confessed to taking a trip (or, as she later admitted, two trips) on a private jet in Tunisia owned by a local tycoon linked to the former president. Her partner, Patrick Ollier, is also a French government minister. It was Ms Alliot-Marie, back in France after her holiday in Tunisia, who then stepped forward to offer the expertise of French security forces to the Tunisian regime, a few days before the president fled the country.

The more that Ms Alliot-Marie has tried to justify her behaviour, the worse it has appeared. “I pay for my own holidays,” she declared in January, before details of the free flights surfaced. But who could reproach her for accepting a lift in a private jet? Her businessman chum happened to be at the airport with his jet when she stepped off the plane from France—you know how it is. Anyway, she claimed, he was not part of the ruling Tunisian clan, but a victim of it. That ordinary French people, who do not have friends with private jets, might find all this shocking seems genuinely to have surprised Ms Alliot-Marie. “I didn't take the time to ask myself how it might appear,” she confessed to Le Parisien, a newspaper.

Both politicians should know better. Ms Alliot-Marie is a political survivor whose authoritative aura has enabled her to glide from one senior post to another without ever quite leaving her mark. Before foreign affairs, she was in charge at defence, the interior ministry and the justice department. She had her first junior ministerial job 25 years ago, under Jacques Chirac's prime ministership; she then ran his party from 1999 to 2002, the first woman to do so. As for Mr Fillon, he was one of the first politicians to warn French voters that the state “is broke”. He has carefully nurtured a reputation for responsible financial management, the antidote to the bling-loving Mr Sarkozy.

Both Mr Fillon and Ms Alliot-Marie are now trying to shrug off the affair of the paid holidays. The prime minister's office claimed that it was normal diplomatic courtesy to accept such hospitality. Ms Alliot-Marie conceded that “people were shocked”, and said she would not do it again. This week Mr Sarkozy tried to squash the scandals by announcing new rules. Henceforth, he decreed, all ministers will have to take their holidays in France. Any invitations abroad would need authorisation to ensure “their compatibility with France's foreign policy”—to be given by the prime minister.

Opposition leaders are not going to let the matter drop. Martine Aubry, the Socialist boss, said she was dismayed and that the government had “lost the sense of public spirit”. Some have called on both Mr Fillon and Ms Alliot-Marie to resign. There are plenty of jokes doing the rounds about “Air Dictator”, and also about France's failure to read events in its own backyard. “Henceforth, in order to know where the next revolution will break out,” suggested one editorialist, “you only have to look at where members of the government are taking their holidays.”

In the past the French might have dismissed all this as business as usual by their political class. There was an unspoken deal under which voters did not query government perks or abuses so long as the politicians did not touch the people's benefits. François Mitterrand, a Socialist president, was a frequent guest of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. To this day, according to Le Monde, another newspaper, French politicians on both left and right holiday in north African hotels with all expenses paid. But, in an age of austerity, when ordinary people are being asked to tighten the purse strings, the mood has changed. Mr Sarkozy seems finally to have grasped this, stating this week that “what was commonplace a few years ago can today be shocking.”

As for French diplomacy in north Africa, this has not been its finest hour. Mr Sarkozy has admitted that he “underestimated” the gravity of events. This is not for want of interest. As far back as 2008, he was urging his fellow Europeans to look across their southern shore. He launched a Mediterranean Union, to build a “great dream of peace and civilisation”, at a jamboree in Paris. But the Mediterranean Union has not met once since. Only last November its second summit was postponed indefinitely. Its Jordanian secretary-general, Ahmad Massa'deh, has just stepped down. And who is its co-president with Mr Sarkozy? Mr Mubarak.